An electronic product code (EPC) is a naming scheme used to uniquely identify individual items or products. The EPC provides additional information not provided in a typical universal product code (UPC). The UPC provides a unique identifier for each make or model of a product while the EPC provides a unique identifier for each individual item of a product.
As shown in FIGS. 1A and 1B, one example of an EPC includes 96 bits of identification data, including a serial number 8 to identify individual items. The identification numbers or EPC bits may be represented by bar code symbols to enable the electronic (optical) reading at the point of sale, upon receiving at warehouses or in any other stage, where the capture of data is necessary for the business processes. In addition to the serial number 8, the EPC bits includes a version 2, manufacturer identifier 4, and product identifier 6. In the example shown in FIG. 1B, the version 2 is 8 bits. The manufacturer ID 4 is 28 bits and provides greater than 268 million possible combinations for unique manufacturers. The product ID 6 is 24 bits and provides greater than 16 million possible combinations for unique products for each manufacturer. The serial number 8 is 36 bits and provides greater than 68 billion possible unique items per product.